Kingfish start to show their fins

May 14, 2014, 6 a.m.

THE inspiration for this report comes from sitting alongside the break wall at Huskisson early Tuesday morning sipping a hot coffee and watching several boats leaving the creek destined for a great day on the water.

THE inspiration for this report comes from sitting alongside the break wall at Huskisson early Tuesday morning sipping a hot coffee and watching several boats leaving the creek destined for a great day on the water.

GOOD FUN: Nathan Brindle with a typical Jervis Bay kingfish for this time of year.

I was feeling jealous, but also very lucky as both small and big boats left the entrance to Currambene Creek, with the bigger ones no doubt heading offshore in search of the first run of yellowfin tuna, which hopefully is not too far away. The water temperature is still hovering around that 20 degree mark on the shelf and there is still plenty of marlin getting caught when conditions allow.

The smaller vessels leaving that morning I assume were heading out to catch themselves a feed of squid, which are in abundance in the bay at present.

The northern side of the bay is less populated by the plagues of leather jackets, so if you are worried about losing your jigs, this side is the better option.

But you do have to work a little harder for your catch.

If you are on the southern side of Jervis Bay around Murrays Beach, you can usually catch a feed quite quickly.

Small to mid-sized kingfish have just turned up around places like middle ground and Longnose bombie.

The spear fishermen have also reported a few bigger fish starting to show in the bay as well.

Deep dropping for blue eye, bar cod, gemfish and whatever other oggalies live on the edge of the continental shelf seems to be the talk in the tackle shop at the moment.

Electric fishing reels, 100 pound braid and a rod that resembles a cut off broomstick is the gear required for this type of fishing.

The Shoalhaven River has been inundated with a run of small jewfish, with big numbers of fish around the 60 to 70 centimetre mark being caught, which would now make most of these fish under the new fisheries’ legal size limit of 70 centimetres and over.

Some nice size flathead are being taken between Broughton Creek and the swirls at the northern end of the canal, with the average fish around the 50 to 55 centimetre mark, which is the perfect eating size for this particular species.

After a little hint in last week’s report of wanting to know where the estuary perch are, I can now tell you all that there are some good numbers of perch around the Nowra Bridge pylons on the northern side of the river.

You can catch up with the shop on Facebook at McCallums Tackle World Nowra or drop in for a chat.